


Vicious Beast

by BlackjackGabbiani



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Backstory, Dammit tags it's MASK not MASKED, F/M, Human v Human, Iron Mask Marauder, Team Rocket - Freeform, Vicious the Mask
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2018-10-27 18:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10814016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackjackGabbiani/pseuds/BlackjackGabbiani
Summary: The fearsome Vicious, his blood-soaked past, and the woman to whom he owed his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This ties into Obsession if you squint.

He was fifteen when he was considered the strongest person in Viridian. Grown men were reluctant to face him. He was fearless, some said. He was heartless, some said. But to everyone, he was Vicious.

It was a name given to him by a pit announcer, right after he had defeated the reigning champion of the arena. The champion was much older, with experience in the ring dating back to before his opponent was born, but he had been no match for the young man's retaliation. The crowd, that underground element that only cities controlled by certain gangs could achieve, cheered nearly deafeningly as the announcer declared the new victor to be a vicious beast.

It was the last thing he heard before he passed out from his injuries. While the same battle would be commonplace in the city's Pokémon gym, humans weren't meant to sustain that level of punishment. Yet that was the entire point, to use nothing but human bodies as the ultimate war machines.

From his awakening on, he would answer only to Vicious. He shouted it out as he returned to the ring a week later, reveling in his new celebrity. While he could walk the streets without recognition from the average citizen, the fighters of the city saw him as nothing short of amazing.

He could do anything he wanted. He had power, real power, not just the kind that could knock someone's teeth out but power over others.

That day, he had just fought. Another uncontested win, another unconscious opponent, and he was outside the cage patching a wound when the fight broke out. Some upstart gangs decided to take the fight to the audience, and had loaded themselves up with pokémon and weapons.

Before long, it was a riot. The cage was cut so no one could barricade themselves. The infirmary, hidden away down the hall in a storage closet, was overrun, a loser from an earlier match upturned from a cot and beaten. In the chaos, Vicious wasn't a champion any more. He was just another target, a disrespected lowling the same as anyone else.

In a riot, nothing can be counted on. Allies turned on each other. Enemies acted as defense, vowing to hash things out another time. Vicious didn't even have time to swing a punch before being hit in the side, ripping his fresh bandage away and tearing a cry from his throat.

The room was a blur of violence. After stopping to bash a would-be attacker's head into the wall, Vicious attempted to make for the door, but seemingly everyone else had the same idea. The gouge in his side lowered his mobility, and he was easily pushed to the ground. He wasn't sure how many times he had been stepped on or how many bones had broken from the assaults, but through means he wasn't sure of himself, he managed to get to the alley.

The violence was mostly contained inside, with the alleyway a far quieter place. He collapsed near a garbage can, and from his limited view could see others had crawled outside to escape. Or to die, as he was certain more than a few of them had done.

He let out a small sigh before a shattered rib stopped the rest. He wasn't fearless. His first instinct had been to run, and here he was giving up. The unstoppable vicious beast, bleeding to death in a filthy alleyway...

From the very top to the very bottom in less than an hour. It figured. He tried to laugh, but no sound came out, his throat moving in imitation of a raucous cackle but his lungs too worn out to back it up.

The sound of a siren approached, and some of the less injured tried to run. If any of them were caught by police, they could kiss freedom goodbye. But the arriving vans weren't police vehicles.

A stranger from one of them approached Vicious, kneeling down to him and prodding his face. "Kid!" the man shouted, "can you hear me?"

He nodded faintly and mumbled something, unsure if he was making any noise.

The man nodded. "All right, let's get this one on board!" he called to another newcomer. The two lifted the boy onto a gurney and started loading him into one of the vans.

"You're doing great, kid," the other person said. "Don't worry. Can you tell me your name?"

His vision blurring and head swimming, he woozily made out a small red R pin on both of them. "Vicious..." he muttered before losing consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

It would be three days before he would wake up, in that unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar building. Overhead, florescent lights shone from manufactured ceiling tiles, and he winced under the brightness. The passage of time was clear, and he remembered the red R.

"Rocket..." he murmured as he tried to sit up. Team Rocket was the most regarded gang in all of Kanto, and their base was rumored to be located near Viridian City. While he was the most powerful fighter in his own circles, they were said to be on an entirely different level, and the praise he recieved was marked with the understanding that gangs like Rocket were exceptions.

He thought, just a few days ago, that they were a bunch of weaklings. Despite their reputation, they never seemed to do anything that impacted the populace at large. They were largely underground despite their known goal being dominance. A group that looked to rule the world wouldn't be so clandestine, he figured, and thought lowly of them for it. The world could only be ruled through force, not petty crime.

But they had just saved his life.

Trying to lean on his elbows was a wasted attempt, as he discovered his right arm was bound in a cast. It wasn't a surprise, considering the extent of the beating, but, overestimating his abilities and pain tolerance, he tried and failed to push past it and fell back with a loud fumble and a cry.

"Oh, you're awake" came from nearby. A doctor soon came into view, from a few beds away. "You almost didn't make it. We thought you'd be out for much longer."

"Yeah yeah..." Vicious mumbled, woozy from his injuries and the various drugs in his system. "I'm unstoppable."

The doctor chuckled. "I'm sure you are. But you're not unbreakable. Lay back down and rest up. The Boss will want to meet you now that you're up." The way he said 'boss' was tinged with a sense of respect.

"Sure." They wanted something from him, but after all the work they did to patch him up, he figured he wasn't in danger. He laid back and closed his eyes, listening to the beeps and hums of the machines plugged into him and others. From what he had seen of the other beds in the common room, it was sparcely populated. Given the carnage of the riot, Vicious figured that not many people were able to walk away from it. He was incredibly lucky, more than in the championship fight, more than he had ever been in his life, and he didn't know what to think about it.

 

Another patient died during the night. The flatline, the rush of the medical staff, the shouting, kept Vicious awake, though only once did he open his eyes. A peek over to the side of his gaze gave a brief view of the patient, enough to determine that he was the man Vicious had defeated just before the riot.

"I win again," he whispered under the din before drifting off.


	3. Chapter 3

That morning, there was no sign of what had happened only a few hours before, the empty bed tidy with tightly pulled new covers. Another patient, a man Vicious didn't know, was sitting on the side of a bed with a medical tech changing a bandage on his arm. After a few minutes, another doctor came up to Vicious and began asking him questions he wasn't really listening to.

"You're only fifteen?" she repeated at one point, echoing something he didn't remember saying. "Is tha--" She stopped in the middle and leaned slightly forward, peering at his face. "...I'm sorry, you looked older than that at first. I guess I see it now."

It was a reaction he got fairly frequently, and initially he had been pulled between the decision to roll with it and be treated as an adult or to have people know his real age and be amazed by the phenom. He had quickly chosen the latter, and found he was treated as an adult anyway.

"All right. Now, no pokémon were found with you. Do you have any?"

"Never liked the little bastards," he muttered. "No use in having them when I do all the fighting myself."

She chuckled. "I guess that's true. Doctors and nurses are expected to have Chanseys, but honestly they're too clumsy to use in a place like this."

He sighed and laid back. "Give it to me straight. How many survivors were there?"

The doctor didn't quite look at him. "I don't know overall, but as far as who we brought here, five."

"Out of?"

"...twelve."

"Awesome. I beat the odds."

Again, a chuckle. "That's putting a good spin on it. Oh!" She rapidly turned around as newcomers entered the room. "The boss is here!" She had the same tone in her voice that the previous night's doctor had, that sense of awe.

The Rocket Boss was often spoken of in the underground, but rarely in specifics, and a lot of rumors had sprung up, making it unclear what the truth was. Vicious had imagined someone threatening-looking, the likes of whom would fit right in in at a fight.

He certainly hadn't pictured a glamorous middle-aged woman, looking more like a fashion magazine model than a crime lord. If he had passed her on the street, he would have assumed she was a know-nothing socialite. It would probably mean a bad end for anyone who thought that and tried to rob her.

She chatted to a doctor for a moment as they looked over a still-unconscious patient. The man with the bandaged arm seemed interested, scooting towards her across the thin mattress.

"She's pretty great, isn't she?" his own doctor asked with a grin. "But we have more to go through here. I'm sure she'll want to meet you, and--"

But the end of the sentence was cut off by a violent clatter as the man with the bandaged arm lept at the Rocket boss with a snarl. Somehow he had managed to palm a blade, in this case the medical scissors the doctor had used on his bandage, and despite the unlikely weapon it was clear he was willing and able to use it as surely as any knife.

Vicious didn't think twice. He sprang up, pushing his own doctor out of the way as he did, and darted towards the attacker. In an instant, he had the man against the wall, left hand on his throat. "You wanna tell me why you were trying to kill the woman who saved your life?"

"Rockets gotta die," the man laughed, strained through the tightening fingers. "All of 'em."

"You first." Vicious squeezed his hand tighter until the man gasped sharply to no avail.

But there was only so much punishment Vicious could endure, and his sudden action rapidly caught up with him. He cried out, releasing the gasping man and collapsing to the floor. The Boss's bodyguard, who had been only a second behind Vicious, finished what the boy had started with a single shot to the attacker's head. Vicious could barely hear the shot, his senses overwhelmed with agony. He had dashed into action over the pain of broken bones and bruised muscles, the adrenalin of the moment briefly keeping him from feeling anything but a sense of duty.

The Boss stood over him, a vision of red and black over a field of white as the doctors stabilized him into bed again and began to reexamine what his strike had done to his body. Vicious wasn't sure but he thought he heard her softly laugh.

"Such loyalty. It needs to be rewarded, if he survives." Her voice was distinguished, a bit like an old movie, and softly comforting as the painkillers took over and Vicious drifted off. What a nice thing to hear, he thought, and knew that he owed her even more now.


	4. Chapter 4

By the time he came to, two further weeks had passed. Even fewer others remained in the room, dark from the hour, and his shifting in place attracted immediate attention.

The doctor from his first awakening was there at his side in an instant. "Vicious? You back with us?"

The boy moved his mouth for a few seconds before any voice could come out. "...is the Boss ok?"

"Oh yes, I heard all about that. She's perfectly fine, thanks to your quick thinking. You were very brave." He paused for a moment to write something on the medical chart. "Actually, she wanted to speak to you about that."

"Oh yeah?" Vicious didn't like that sound, his voice raspy from lack of use, and didn't want to talk to her in that state. "When?"

"The soonest she's available. Would that be all right?"

Vicious considered the time. "In the morning?"

"If she's available then. I'll call her receptionist and see. I know she was going somewhere with her son tonight."

A woman like her, so in control, so powerful, had a child? The idea that anybody in that position had a home life at all was alien to him. If anybody in his networks had a kid, they were the sort concieved in a back alley somewhere, or abandoned as a remnant of a life long left behind. Though he had been by far the youngest person at most of his events, even he had left his family behind, ducking out on a similar night and never looking back.

But a gang like Rocket operated on a whole different level. They were organized, with thousands of agents and billions of p at their disposal, and could no doubt afford a more normal life for their higher ups.

He laid back. "Whenever she can see me. I wanna talk to her too."

"You were really brave," the doctor repeated. "Medically inadvisable, but that sort of bravery is rare, even among experienced officers."

Even just talking was wearing on him. "I gotta rest again. Wake me when she gets here."

"All right."

 

Vicious wasn't aware of falling asleep, but it seemed that as soon as he closed his eyes it was daylight out. He groaned and instinctively tried to cover his eyes but found himself hindered by the IVs still affixed to his arms. So instead he tried to sit up, and failed at it as well. "Dammit," he grunted, his voice still harsh and thick. "This sucks..."

"I wouldn't swear while the Boss is in here," a passing orderly warned. "She'll be here in a few minutes."

"Yeah, yeah..." He took it for granted that he would know how to compose himself around someone of her status, but wasn't sure why he had thought that.

He laid still and stared at the industrial ceiling. They were going to wake him up soon anyway, provided they lived up to the doctor's promise, but there wasn't anything to do in the meantime.

What would she want to say to him? What would he say in return? He hadn't considered that he didn't really know how to speak to her, and only then realized that they hadn't spoken before at all. Between the time she entered the room and the time he passed out, less than two minutes had passed.

The time scale of everything that had happened slowly settled into place. The riot was less than a month ago. He had, in that time, lost more power than most people would ever have in their lives. But he was alive, and that was more than could be said for so many others.

Hard footsteps alerted him to the arrival of the boss's bodyguards, and a moment later, the boss herself. She scanned the room, finally settling her gaze on Vicious, and went directly to him.

He didn't have time to think of any answers. This was happening, and it was happening right away.

"So." Even the one syllable was enough to send a jolt up his spine. "I'd like to offer you a job. You've already shown loyalty greater than many far more seasoned officers, and I don't even know your name."

"Vicious." He realized he should say more. "It's Vicious, ma'am."

She leaned back in the office chair, a delicate smirk on her lips. "That's what you're called. What's your name?"

"It's the only name I've got, ma'am."

She didn't seem surprised. "Mm, that seems to happen a lot around here. Viridian can be a hell of a city. Tell me about yourself."

"Nothing much to say. I'm a fighter. Strongest in the city."

She chuckled, the sound surprisingly light and airy. "At your age? Impressive."

"It's true."

"Oh, I believe you. That power you demonstrated earlier was more than enough to prove it to me. Did it occur to you just how serious your condition was?"

He shifted slightly, trying to face her more fully. "Not really. I just wish I could have finished him off myself."

His attempt was in vain, as she closed her eyes and tilted her head towards the ceiling. "And have you killed anyone before?"

"Well..." He wasn't really sure how to answer that. "Comes with the territory. Not intentionally, I guess...but I wasn't really trying to avoid it either."

She chuckled. "You don't seem too terribly broken up about it."

"Nah, first time it happened I was surprised, but that's the risk you take." He shrugged as best he could. "And if someone is gonna be stupid enough to try and kill the person who saved their life, they don't deserve that life."

"That makes sense. Tell me, what would you be doing if you weren't a fighter?"

"I donno, ma'am. I never thought about anything else."

This time she looked right at him, a sly smile crossing her face. "I would like you to consider working for me."

He took a sharp breath even though he knew it would hurt, the sharp pain resonating through him as a mildly masochistic wake up call. "Absolutely, ma'am. I owe you my life."

Her smile didn't waver. "I figured you would say that. You strike me as the sort to repay your debts. I like that honesty."

Vicious tried to mirror her expression but could only manage a halfhearted smirk. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll report to duty as soon as I'm out of here."

"In the meantime, I'm having you moved to a private room. This...mass treatment facility is mostly cleared out anyway, and we need the beds open in case some mission goes sideways." Her delicate hand waved towards the rest of the room. Only a few people remained, one having been unconcious since the riot. He was someone Vicious had fought once, though he couldn't remember much about the fight at the time.

"Thank you, ma'am."

She chuckled. "You should heal up. I expect to see you in uniform by the end of the month. That gives you...oh, around three weeks." She had checked her watch for the date. "It'll be a standard one, but I have no doubt someone with your fortitude and determination will rise in the ranks very quickly." She stood up, her tailored suit still perfectly in place. "Now, I have a meeting to go to, but I was eager to check in with you. I'll see you later."

He nodded in understanding. "I've said this before, but I'll say it as many times as I have to. Thank you, ma'am."

That brought another laugh from her, and again he thought of old movies. "Such respect. I'll see you later."

 

After she left, Vicious had so many questions, ones he wouldn't have asked to begin with. What was her name? What was she like? What was her meeting? How old was she? How old was her son? How many times had someone tried to kill her? Had /she/ ever killed anyone? How did she get to be the boss?

A question he regretted not asking was what sort of work she had in mind for him. He had never taken orders from anybody and he didn't want to start any time soon, but he owed her more than he had ever owed anyone else. Taking orders from just her didn't seem so bad though.

 

Soon after, Vicious was moved to a private room, as promised. It was smaller and there was no window, but the bed's armrest had a built-in radio. He had listened hesitantly at first, but there was no mention of the riot on the news. Time marched on. He would probably be given up for dead after a while, and the thought both disappointed and relieved him.

He had been on top for so long, admired and feared and loved by so many, and it was all gone. He was on the bottom again, as low as low got. But it was a new ladder to climb, and potentially could bring him even greater admiration and fear and love. Heck, he reasoned, the boss already admired him, and that was probably more than some people who had served as Rockets longer than Vicious had been alive had earned.

And it would be nice to not put his life on the line every few weeks. It was usually a matter of time when it came to fighters like him. Either they would retire, generally after some catastrophic injury, they would die in agony of internal wounds or years of brain damage, or drop dead in the ring. The latter was what Vicious had seen for himself, wanting the cheers of the crowd to be the last thing he heard.

But the thought didn't bring him the satisfaction it had before. It didn't seem as heroic an end as he had previously thought.

Part of him resisted the shift. "You're a fucking coward," he whispered, only afterwards realizing he should have checked to ensure nobody was coming in. "A damn coward."

This was a chance to reinvent himself. He wouldn't be the weak fool who ran from a fight. He would be the brave hero who saved the boss without a thought for his own safety. The thought was immensely satisfying.


End file.
